I had planned to spend Monday morning at George L. Allen Sr. Courts Building, where attorneys for Dallas City Hall and the owners of Valley View Center were scheduled to square off over millions of dollars worth of alleged code violations. Fun!

Instead, I found myself with some unexpected free time, because on Friday, while we were all focused on the latest corruption scandal oozing out of Dallas City Hall, those lawyers were signing the paperwork to settle this case.

Which means that by year's end, if not before, Valley View will finally be destroyed. So they say. Again.

Do not yet pour out an Orange Julius for the fallen in this long-running war. The demolition happens only if all goes according to plan. And so far, little has when it comes to the dead zone at Preston Road and LBJ Freeway, where some of this city's most valuable land sags and rots and despairs.

Owners Jeff Beck and son Scott, who once vowed billions of dollars' worth of redevelopment atop the mall's remnants, have promised the demolition many times before. Yet while other property owners and developers plant their tall and shiny structures nearby, closer to the Galleria and the toll road, still the hulking eyesore stands, in recent years so many shades of dangerous, surreal and sad. It wasn't long ago that the homeless camped out in some of its ruins, and the TV show Queen of the South depicted it as an abandoned Phoenix casino that had rotted from the inside out.

But a demolition permit has been pulled, and according to terms of the settlement by no later than New Year's Eve 2019, the mall's carcass should wind up in Waste Management's DFW Landfill in Lewisville. An ignominious end for Sound Town, the Skateboard Shop, McCord's, the Game Chest, Farrell's and all the other places where North Dallas kids who came of age in the 1970s and '80s — myself among them — spent our free time and allowances.

North Dallas council member Lee Kleinman, who went from the project's cheerleader to its loudest skeptic, said he was "pleased to be making progress towards the demolition of the mall so that re-development on the east side of the district can catch up to the activity on the west side." Kleinman's statement was atypically reserved on a subject about which he is no doubt tired of talking — and shouting. But I understand, too, his reluctance to say much else. No one wants to be accused of endangering a peace agreement between these warring factions.

The settlement is also an actual plan. It's very clear about what must happen and by when. The timeline kicks in almost immediately.

The atrium of the nearly abandoned Valley View Center in Dallas on Nov. 8, 2018.

(Nathan Hunsinger/Staff Photographer)

By Friday the Becks must have a contract signed to begin asbestos remediation; they must also have permits to demo the mall and parking garage — and they've done so.

By March 11, all the remaining tenants, save for the upstairs AMC multiplex, must be out. I wrote at January's end about the eviction notices given to some of them, such as the couple who owned the taekwondo school and next-door bodega; the entrepreneur making test-kitchen ice cream drenched in booze; the kosher pizza maker and the others who held on longer than they should have while enduring sweltering summers and frigid winters because rent was cheap.

We learned later that this show was just flim-flam — a last-ditch effort to hang onto $36 million in tax incentives the City Council had promised for infrastructure upgrades around the new development. A bulldozer took only a small bite out of that garage. And then, nothing more.

Demolition of the mall must — must! — begin by the end of June. Next year, just one thing should still stand on the property: the AMC theater (and enough mall to support its operations). A map included with the settlement shows what can stay as "part of the remodel project."

The settlement says the Becks have agreed to pay the city $1 million in code violation penalties — a fraction of the $3.5 million in fines they've racked up in recent years. But if they live up to the checklist described above, if the year ends with the mall a memory, most of that million will be forgiven.

"They are remedying code violations by demolishing the mall, and I am fine with that," said Executive Assistant City Attorney Chhunny Chhean, who filed the suit last year. "Compliance is our goal, and they have achieved that with this agreement."

What used to be. And won't be much longer.

(Nathan Hunsinger/Staff Photographer)

Turn out the lights, Valley View. The party's over.

(Nathan Hunsinger/Staff Photographer)

The mural designed by architect Brenda Stubel on the old Sanger-Harris (Macy's) building at Valley View Center, which has already been demolished.